The final cause of a college program is confusing for some students, because students are sometimes “caught between their intuitive knowledge that college is no place for them and everyone else’s opinion that college is the only right place for them” (92). If an ethical young person wishes to remain happy by avoiding debt
and rejecting high college debts, and if the ethical young person feels pressured by others to conclude that an “college is the only right place” (2) for him, then he will be confused. John Keats writes, “His lonely fear [is] that no one will understand” (97). It is cruel to tell a senior in high school that he can either be a winner by completing a college degree in four years or a loser by avoiding college after high school. Thus, we need to “put an end to the current hysterical insistence that a high school students forfeits all chance of success if he does not win a college admissions immediately upon high school graduation” (182).The material cause of a college program is the “youth and their need for a program” 165). It is true that young people “badly need a suitable program” (167). Because colleges today have moved away from developing a young person’s ability to match the Scriptures with philosophy, colleges today are most helpful to a small group of students. Keats writes, “Generally speaking, those who derive most from their collegiate experience are bright youngsters of gregarious nature who were never challenged in mediocre high schools and who come from minimal cultural backgrounds” (178). If a young person had a “mediocre high school” and lacks a “minimal cultural background,” then college is a good place for him (56). However, if a young person studied logic, politics, physics, math and psychology in high school and visited local museums and theaters during high school, then college is not a good place for him. Students from good high schools “say that much of it is a rehash of knowledge they acquired in high school” (83). One young lady said, “This is just the thirteenth grade of the city public school system. So this is college?” (41)
The formal cause of a college program is the need for students to be deceptive and phony when explaining their reasons for going to college. “Students deduce that they are to pretend” (48). If a young person is confused about the loans involved with purchasing a college tuition, then he will pretend and imagine that everything is fine and that going to college is the best option for him. As a result, students will go to college and learn to pass their courses by completing homework with answers they think the teacher wants to hear. A student will “keep his thoughts to himself while handing in work that reflects his professor's opinions” (54).
A college program is seen as a preparing agent for a young person who needs “to gain experience” and allow him “to grow up” (35). Colleges actively promote themselves as preparing agents for young people, since “there is pressure for colleges to operate at capacity” (41). Contrary to what some college counselors say, there are better preparing agents for some young people than college. “Many alternatives to going to college exist, and not all of them are bad. One of the more worthwhile is to “travel abroad” (185). The author quotes a college senior who said, “I know just big bunches of kids who would get a whole lot more out of a trip to Europe. And their fathers could send them to Europe for four years for about half as much money as they're paying to send them here” (185).
The assisting agents for a young person thinking about college are “junior college” and “community colleges” (22). However, junior and community colleges “are euphemisms for postgraduate high school education of one sort or another” (22). Thus, a young person who needs a suitable program to develop his strengths might look for options away from the graduate high school programs at a community college. Another set of assisting agents for a young person thinking about college are school counselors. However, “a question arises here as to the adviser’s credentials as an adviser… He had no training or experience in advising anyone on any matter under the sun. Still less had he an interest in human motivation” (76). A young person who makes an appointment with academic counselors at a community college, a state college or a university will meet advisors who feel pressured to enroll students in their programs in order to operate their colleges at full capacity. As a result, the young person’s wishes, fears and concerns will be ignored by academic counselors. (22, 76)
The author suggests three instrumental agents to help a young person find a suitable program to develop his strengths and talents. “A college should offer three separate programs. It could reserve (1) a diploma for students who satisfy the college's scholarly requirements. Then it could grant (2) a special certificate of competence to show a prospective employer. And then it could offer (3) a document for adolescents who… profit more from general survey courses” (181). A young person might develop his strengths by completing (1) a college degree in four years in his major, such as a bachelor's degree. Or a young person can develop his talents by successfully completing one class that offers (2) a certificate proving his successful completion of a course like that offered by Coursera or Edx. Or a young person might develop his skills by successfully completing the two years of general requirements and then receiving (3) a document, such as an associate's degree. A fourth option is for a young person to successfully complete the application processes for five or ten colleges and then (4) using the acceptance letters as certificates of competency. After all, it “is more sensible to hire on the basis of job aptitude and personality than on the basis of possession of a diploma” (189).
According to a counseling agent in the American College, “The American college exists as a vast WPA project which gives promising adolescents work to do while keeping them out of the job market and also keeping several hundred thousand faculty members off the streets” (36). Colleges allow both students and faculty to avoid a career. Concerning college teachers, Keats writes, “Ability or inability to teach is seldom the basis on which a man is promoted or fired” (65). A college should look for good teachers to increase its product value. However, colleges simply look for teachers who go along with their government projects. As a result, “today’s courses tend toward narrower and narrower examination of particulars within specific fields which are related to nothing but the further study of themselves” (69). Many college programs help students to understand ideologies that exist in college programs alone. And many teachers are just as boring as the DMV handbook. “The majority of college teachers [are] frankly, not much good” (63).
Induction and the process of making conclusions after experiencing patterns with the five senses allows a person to conclude that colleges are very aggressive toward young people. “They send talent scouts throughout the land to try to sell high school students and their parents on the virtue of attending dear old Amherst, Harvard, or Wherever” (42). Because “there is pressure for colleges to operate at capacity” (41), “talent scouts” and campus representatives regularly set up tables and pass out flyers on high school and junior college campuses. The campus representatives “pretend” (48) they what is best for students. However, they are more interested in finding students to pay for the personal projects of teachers.
History shows that over the last twenty five years college courses have become more difficult, because college courses simply assign a higher quantity of tedious work. “College work is more difficult today than it was twenty five years ago, not because the content of the course has been quantitatively improves, but merely because more work is asked, with the result that most of it is simply dull” (53). Traditionally, students since the Middle Ages have studied seven topics which were promoted by schools until the 1930s. For example, for hundreds of years students studied the “Trivium” involving grammar, logic, rhetoric, and “Quadrivium” involving arithmetic, geometry, music, and astronomy. Today the Trivium and Quadrivium have been replaced by “particulars within specific fields” (69).
A college program is analogous to a counterfeit product. Colleges save money by employing graduate teachers and adjuncts as instructors and both students and parents feel cheated after they agree to pay the full price of tuition. Keats writes, “Here they are, and their families, paying out thousands of dollars for a college education, much as they might have paid high prices for good seats at a national championship professional football game, only to discover that they are not to watch the stars play the game, but that the teams are using their second or third string substitutes” (68). Further, a college is analogous to a conveyorbelt. “Students arrives on campus to find themselves quickly hooked onto one sort of conveyor belt or another, ticketed for some narrow academic destination” (162). Further, a student who drops out of college is analogous to “a madman, a leper, or an unusual statistic.” Hence, young people in high school are seen as gullible buyers of high college prices and young people who stop attending college before graduating are seen as drop outs, lepers and quitters.
A sign that a college program might be unsuitable for a young person is the regular observation of temper tantrums in college sophomores. The sophomore “is tired of the lockstep. He's been doing a bang-up job of study for five years in a row, including the high school years, and he sees nothing ahead but three more of the same sort of years, and he is a tired soldier. He is particularly likely to blow up if he can’t see where any of this is getting him” (78). If a sophomore in college is confused about his major, anxious about his loans, and concerned about job opportunities in his major, then he will blow things out of proportion and get angry.
The main motive for going to college is the popularity of the plan by numerous parents and advisors around the country. “The only reason we believe that a man must have a college diploma to get a job nowadays is that everyone else seems to believe he should.” The major premise in this deceptive argument known as a bandwagon fallacy, is clarified in the following: “Everyone who can do college work should go to college” (153). The premise is deceptive and false, since not everyone has the money to purchase a college tuition. (29, 153)
The feelings and passion involved in a young person who is thinking about college are several. “The eighteen year old freshman, no matter how bright, is a jumble of hopes, confusions, doubts, torments, dreams, and gaucheries, whirling around a storm center of incandescent sensuality” (32). A young person hopes that a college program will be productive, feels sad about the high prices and boring assignments, becomes fearful when talking to other students about debts, feel angry when stuck in the same pattern as high school, and desires to have fun with the students in college clubs. Hence, it is difficult for a young person to focus on a college program.
Statistics show that college programs are unsuitable for some young people. Keats writes, “Only the very few can actually discipline themselves to do the reading” (81). Further, few high schools develop a young person’s strengths and talents, because “few high school are challenging” (94). Further, college programs might be suitable for 40% of young people. According to Keats, “For the right students - and maybe they amount to 40 per cent of the total - the American college offers a reasonable approach to an education” (155).
I shall use my freedom to review the above investigation of the book by Keats. Hmm... Next, I shall use my freedom to make two choices. I personally like the assisting agent and the counseling agent. Next, I shall use my freedom to make the following command that expresses my choices. The Keat’s book from 1963 about issues in higher education is helpful today, because young people need to realize that community colleges are “post graduate high schools” (22) and that colleges and universities serve to keep teachers and administrators “off the streets.” (36)
Final remarks. I agree with the reporter from the New York Herald Tribune who said, “Every high school senior should read this book” (back cover).
© By Theodore Faulders, September 7, 2017.